Chapter 20

Dinner was not in the central business district or downtown.

Following Lin Xian's mobile phone navigation, Lu Chengtian drove to the vicinity of the famous Buddhist pagoda in Shenzhen-Hong Kong City. The two walked along the alley paved with bluestone slabs for a while before arriving at the private restaurant courtyard with a red lantern hanging at the door.

The restaurant's interior is also decorated in an antique style. It's almost like an indoor lake, with more than a dozen stilt boats parked in the lake. Each stilt boat is a private guest room. Just lower the bamboo curtain and no one will disturb you.

A girl with her face covered with a veil sat on the corridor on the second floor, with a guqin on her knees. The sound was transmitted to every corner of the restaurant through high-fidelity radio equipment and speakers. The sound was not loud, but just right in elegance.

The two of them sat in the gently rocking black-sailed boat, and the air was filled with the scent of agarwood mixed with the fragrance of pears.

While Lu Chengtian was astounded by Lin Xian's taste, his nerves, strained by the case, gradually relaxed. "This scent is quite unique." He closed his eyes and gently sniffed the subtle fragrance.

"Goose Pear Tent Fragrance. Mix pear juice and agarwood and steam them, letting the sweet aroma of the pear juice permeate the agarwood. It has a calming effect." Lin Xian gave him a brief explanation, observing his gradually relaxed brow and asked, "Are you feeling better?"

Lu Chengtian felt as if his heart was gently tickled by a feather.

Through the shadowy figures in the surrounding black-sailed boats, Lu Chengtian discovered that most of the people coming here were couples or close friends, and they might be the only pair of male creatures having dinner here together.

This made him somewhat uncomfortable, so he began to change the subject: "You seem to be familiar with places suitable for dates like this."

The implication is that Editor-in-Chief Lin plays games and plays with women a lot on a daily basis.

"This place is suitable for relaxing. When I'm under a lot of pressure, I like to come here to handle work. I saw that you have been under a lot of work pressure recently and you are quite angry, so I brought you here out of kindness. Don't you like it?" Editor-in-Chief Lin suddenly felt that his good deeds had been in vain.

At this time, someone gently shook the brass wind chimes hanging outside. Lin Xian said, "Come in," and the waitress in a red dress brought up the dishes on the cart behind her one by one.

The dishes are not large in size, but each one is cooked very delicately. They are mostly seasonal vegetables, river fish, seafood, seasonal fruits, etc., as well as various desserts.

"I can't eat meat, so you have to eat vegetarian food with me." Lin Xian picked up a piece of fish maw and put it on Lu Chengtian's plate.

Looking at the crystal white and tender fish, Lu Chengtian didn't move his chopsticks. Instead, his eyes swept over the small, bright red mole on the side of Lin Xian's neck and said lightly, "You are so unrestrained in your kindness to others. Aren't you afraid of encountering a beast like a dog biting Lu Dongbin?"

Lin Xian laughed angrily: "It's not okay to be nice to you, and it's not okay to be mean to you, what do you want?"

After saying that, he suddenly leaned closer to Lu Chengtian, pressed his hand on the back of his neck, paused for a moment, and their noses touched.

The next second, his lips brushed lightly against Lu Chengtian's, and they separated immediately.

The light kiss made Lu Chengtian's whole body tense and stiff, his blood quickly rushed up, and his whole body felt like it was electrified.

Lin Xian let him go in time and returned to his seat.

The black-sailed boat swayed gently on the water, and the dishes on the table were safe and sound.

Editor-in-Chief Lin, who had teased someone during the conversation, looked at the crimson color on the tip of Lu Chengtian's ear and chuckled: "Beast? Do you have the guts, you little bastard?"

Lu Chengtian's eyes were dark and his voice was low and hoarse: "You'd better not test me again and again like this." He calmed his breathing, drank the cold tea in the cup, and then buried his head in eating in silence without saying another word.

Lin Xian leisurely ate a plate of crispy cold-mixed wolfberry sprouts while changing the subject. "You found sanitary napkins in Liu Yaoyao's bag at the scene of her suicide, and the autopsy didn't show any pregnancy. You lied to Luo Hua back then, partly to determine if he had sexually assaulted Liu Yaoyao as Qi Huan claimed, but mainly to divert his attention so you could take his hair and verify if he'd used drugs—but the test came back negative. What do you think?"

Returning to the case, Lu Chengtian picked up the serving chopsticks and picked up the tender and firm cheek meat of the finless porpoise and placed it on Lin Xian's plate while saying, "Qi Huan said at the time that when the security guard opened the door to the health room, he smelled a strange sandalwood scent in the air, with a hint of bitter almond sweetness, and Liu Yaoyao was in a coma. If he's not lying, then Luo Hua must have lit the galan incense, which contains a hallucinogenic ingredient similar to LSD. So Liu Yaoyao only uttered a brief resistance and didn't struggle again. But even as an inhaled drug, galan incense is highly addictive. Luo Hua has inhaled galan incense, there's no reason why it can't be detected in his system."

"That's the theory, and there are no obvious loopholes in Qi Huan's words, so we can believe it for now. But there is another possibility. There is an 'antidote' for Galan incense. As long as it is lit and inhaled, it will become addictive. The cost for the drug trafficking group is too high. There must be some way to prevent the leader from becoming addicted after inhaling it. Only those who accidentally inhale it without knowing it will become addicted." Lin Xian picked up the piece of fish face meat on his plate and put it into his mouth.

"Can there be an antidote for drugs?" Lu Chengtian rested his hand on his forehead, pondering for a moment. Suddenly, he looked at Lin Xian with a sharp gaze and said, "Do you know something?"

Lin Xian spread his hands. "I'm just offering a thought. After all, when drug trafficking gangs sell drugs, they need to let the other party inspect the goods. But many dealers don't use drugs themselves, they just harm others. So, it's entirely reasonable to assume that they have a way to avoid accidental inhalation. As for whether they actually have one, you can go and check it out."

"During the meeting that day, Zhao Yiqing asked you why the drug trafficking group in the Golden Triangle wanted to kill you. Your answer at the time was that the drug maker gave you the formula, and the drug lord was afraid that you would seize his market after returning to China, so he sent Tunqin to kill you. Could that formula be related to Blue Flame and Galanxiang?" Lu Chengtian stared at Lin Xian with his dark eyes, like a crawling cheetah, with a sense of oppression that was about to explode.

It seems that there is no winter in the small town in the Golden Triangle. What remains in Lin Xian’s mind is always the scene of wild grass and poppies growing together, and the incessant chirping of insects in the long night.

Five years had passed, and the name of the drug maker was still clearly imprinted in his mind, visiting his dreams on countless nights and breaking his already fragile sleep. He would occasionally wake up shouting "Beiling"'s name.

Armed men with guns roamed nearby. They sat side by side on the hillside, the long weeds swaying in the summer evening breeze. It was a rare moment of leisure in their hectic lives.

Lin Xian propped his hands behind his back and looked up at the sky. Bai Ling suddenly lay down, resting his head on his legs, and told him that he also graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in chemistry, but came from a poor family. His father died young, and his mother was terminally ill and had been lying in the ICU for years. He needed money and could only rely on him.

"If I had no other choice, I wouldn't have taken this path." When Bai Ling said this, a lonely white bird was reflected in his eyes, flying towards the vast sunset clouds at the end of the sky.

Lin Xian gazed at the rolling mountains in the distance, the direction of the China-Myanmar border. Countless drug enforcement officers had perished along that line, and countless poppy spirits, clinging to the white powder, had passed through the hidden gaps between the mountains, filling empty souls.

The wind blew Lin Xian's hair. Bai Ling saw his amber eyes, which seemed to never waver, and heard his ethereal voice drifting on the wind: "Yes, there are always too many helplessness in this world, but people always have more than one choice. It's just that we all happened to make the worst choice - do you think the drug maker can make an antidote for the drug?"

Bai Ling's black shirt puffed up in the wind. He was stunned, as if he hadn't considered this possibility. Lin Xian smiled softly, "Even if it were possible, no poison maker would do that. Who would cut off their own source of income?"

Until that day, the drug dealer plunged a syringe filled with murky liquid into Lin Xian's neck, just to make him prove he was Wu Liu's man. Bai Ling climbed through the window of his room in the darkness and fed him a liquid mingled with the scent of bitter almonds and sandalwood, alleviating the agony of his heart-wrenching pain.

He then realized that drugs were not without a cure.

But he looked down at the electronic shackles on his wrist and realized that the only thing that could not be solved was the addiction in his heart.

Time seemed to stop inside the black-sailed boat. Lu Chengtian's gaze was as if it had substance. Lin Xian lowered her head and scooped a small bowl of mung bean and lotus seed soup and placed it in front of him, not avoiding the aggressive, bright gaze. "You'll know eventually, but not now."

The mung beans and lotus seeds were cooked until soft and tender, looking sweet and tempting in the rustic black ceramic bowl. Lu Chengtian stirred it twice with a spoon, but he had no appetite for more.

After a long silence, he suddenly looked up at Lin Xian. "Why were you and Zhou Xinzhang at the Blue Flame packaging site? Why are the drug lords in Myanmar hunting you? Can I assume that you gave the formula given to you by the drug maker as a token of your loyalty to the drug lord within the Zhou Group, the so-called 'Captain'? But I can't understand why you did this."

Lin Xian subconsciously reached out and took out the cigarette box, glanced at the matches placed thoughtfully on the table, seemed to remember something, put the cigarette to his nose and sniffed it, but ultimately did not light it.

"I told you, as long as you have evidence, you can arrest me. Right now, you might be having dinner with a drug lord's lover, chatting about the case—Captain Lu, don't you feel a chill down your spine?"

It was always like this. Once Lu Chengtian questioned her, Lin Xian would always resort to Tai Chi—using a method that she knew would anger him.

But this time, Lu Chengtian remained calm. "I've looked through the newspapers from later times. Nine years ago, you went to our small county town. It wasn't to investigate the poverty alleviation you'd mentioned, but rather to investigate the 'widow village' of drug traffickers. Your words were calm, yet filled with hatred for the drug lords. The boy you anonymously profiled had both his father and mother die from drug abuse. He'd just witnessed his mother's tragic death in the closet, and now he was being hunted by creditors. Even I, the person involved, felt so sorry for myself when I read that. The drug traffickers truly deserved death."

"——How could someone like you infiltrate a drug trafficking group and become the drug lord's lover?" Lu Chengtian finished speaking, took a sip of the mung bean and lotus seed soup carefully selected by Editor-in-Chief Lin, and commented lightly: "It tastes good."

"Where did you see that newspaper?" Lin Xian found it a little unbelievable.

That newspaper was only distributed in Shenzhen and Hong Kong and ceased publication eight years ago. In that era when information was not spread so quickly, how could Lu Chengtian, who was in a small county in the northwest, know about it?

"Lin Xian, the investigative reporter who was once a big name, came to our small county and wrote a textbook-like anti-drug masterpiece. I don't know how our ideological and political teacher found it, but he made a copy for each of us and taught us to cherish life and stay away from drugs." Lu Chengtian said.

The once-powerful Editor-in-Chief Lin rubbed his nose and said, "We're almost done eating, let's go back to your house. By the way, if you don't have any extra toiletries at home, please take me back to Guanhu No. 1 so I can get some."